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Hey there,

I've been playing friendly games with my friend recently. We're both relatively new to the game, but I have a bit more experience than he does. At the moment, he only has enough models to field a 500 point army of Tau. I've been, therefore, fielding 500 points of my Eldar (of which I have a bunch more) to play against him, letting us both get practice in. However, he keeps kicking my butt! The problem is, at 500 points with Tau, he has a ton of long range, high strength, low-AP weapons I just can't seem to compete with. His list, in a nutshell:

2x6 Fire Warriors
A squad of Sniper Drones
2 Crisis Suits with Missile Pods and Plasma Gun, each with 1 Gun Drone
a Crisis Suit Commander with Missile Pods and Plasma Gun, 1 Gun Drone and 1 Shield Drone.

The Eldar force I've been using is:
Farseer - Spirit Stones, Doom, Guide
7 Dire Avengers w/ Exarch (2 cats, Bladestorm), and Wave Serpent (TL SC)
7 Dire Avengers (on foot)
1 War Walker with 2x Scatter Lasers

Now, bear in mind that my Eldar force is a small chunk of what is a larger force, so the units tend to be configured for their roles in a larger army, not necessarily optimized for a 500 point game. But you can see that he outnumbers me by quite a bit, has much higher strength weapons with much longer ranges. If I could get the Avengers in the Serpent close enough, they could hop out and Bladestorm + Doom + Guide would make short work of any of his units, however in every single game we've played, one of his Crisis Suits has managed to pop the Wave Serpent on turn 1 or turn 2 with its missiles before I got close enough, spilling those Avengers out onto the ground to be picked off by all the AP4 and AP3 weapons. The War Walker has actually done the best, wiping out multiple squads in one game, but with AV10 it tends to get popped as soon as one of the Crisis Suits turns its attention to it.

So here's my question. What tweaks to this list would you suggest to help me compete with his Tau at 500 points? I have a feeling I'll do much better at higher point values, but due to the expense of their units, a 500 point Eldar army is pretty limited! For reference, here is what else I have of Eldar atm:

10 Guardians w/ Shuriken Cannon
3 Warlocks
Another War Walker w/ 2 Star Cannons
1 more Dire Avenger (Total of 15 atm)
5 Rangers
7 Harlequins + Troupe Master and Shadowseer (So 9 total)
1 Fire Prism
Prince Yriel

I am planning on getting another Battleforce and 1 more Fire Prism to round out my Eldar 1500 point list, but likely won't have until Christmas. Any advice would be welcome! Thanks.

Yeah your taking the wrong approach, do not try to out gun him as with Tau at that low of points you'll get your teeth kicked in.

Take 7 harlies with shadowseer attach a farseer with fortune only.
Take 5 rangers and wither infil into cover or outflank
Take 1 10 man squad of DA in a bare serpent

Too lazy to tallies poitns atm but you get the idea

If you go don't go first, stay in reserve. You have to get him into CC with the fire warriors asap. Use fortune on the harlies squad and walk them up the field, if the suits land to try to take them out pop them asap. CC with the DA against the fire warriors. Rangers stay in cover as that will jack with his low AP, pick off targets of oppertunity and try to get the crisis suits to land in range. Overall you'll have a tough time at that low of points without meta Tau units.

Don't forget then:
With a seer attached to the harlies, the lose the usage of some special rules.

They don't ignore terrain completely (difficult terrain at 3D6).
They lose hit and run if they assault with the seer attached to them.

They get everything else though.

Rangers and DA seem ok, but I never liked the min sized rangers, and small points is a hard range to fit in stuff without sacrificing something else.

Be careful of those missile pods, they are good at hurting serpents.

That seems like good advice, and if I had really been thinking I would have realized trying to outgun Tau is a fairly futile manuver, especially at this point level.

I don't have my codex with me, I'm at work, but from what I remember, that list with the Harlies, while probably standing a chance of being effective, will go over 500 points. I tried adding it up from memory (pretty sure Im fairly accurate on most point costs) and it comes to like 474 without the Rangers. But the general idea is good, I may play with it on Army Builder when I get home and see what I can come up with.

I can't wait till he gets more models so I can bring my larger force against him... although even my larger force is primarily shooty. Maybe I'll try to come up with an alternate melee-heavy Eldar list just for him.

/shrug.
I don't really define Tau as a primarily shooty force though.
It's a force that places the shot that counts well. They are a force that can move into the best positions for their shots and adds quality to those attacks.

True, everything shoots, but it's generally not a quanitity type of shooting and more quality shooting.

This would be a good scenario for Pathfinders if you have them. Tau LD is pathetic.

It always confuses me when people talk about Pathfinders in relation to Tau and Eldar D:

Anyways, as the others have said, you can't outshoot him. You have to either get in CC, or park in cover. I would personally take all three warwalkers, and outflank them all.

Sanctjud wrote:Don't forget then:
With a seer attached to the harlies, the lose the usage of some special rules.

They don't ignore terrain completely (difficult terrain at 3D6).
They lose hit and run if they assault with the seer attached to them.

WHere does it say that I have the codex in front of me and cant find it in the Harlquin entry anywhere

Fortune is a must for the farseer, and a squad of scorps in tandem can be vy effective.

Rangers work well against my tau friend, 1,000 points of firepower bearing down on 10 of them, survived for 4 turns, that 2+ cover save is nasty, especially with fortune.
Guardians also work well as long as your opponent doesn't have many blast templates...

Stay in cover and assualt, i would almost take some shining spears or scorps flanking with a serpent to make sure you get in, remember the the 2 glaring weakness's in the Tau codex, 1: Only crisis suits can take any kind of weapon to negate cover saves, unless he is packing the frag air projecter, a bunch of fortuned rangers/pathfinders is going to be next to impossible to get rid of. 2: No power weapons in the entire army unless he takes farsight.

Well...the tau friend could always convert to...

6x firewarriors mounted in devil fish (sms/disrupt pod/multi track, flechette)
6 fire warriors unmounted (mounting turn 1)

Hammer head (2x burst, targ array, dirsupt pod, fletchette)

Commander Shas'el (Hw multi, Stim injector, Missile pod, Plas rifle, targ array)

should be like 502 points or something like that...then youd have to solve an AP problem as well as volume of fire problem?

Fortune your Wave-Serpent to help you get closer? That and try to force morale tests by killing off drones, maybe.